


The Cost

by Blood_Stained_Fingers



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Apathy, Depression, Harry Potter is Not a Horcrux, Harry Potter is a Horcrux, Horcrux Creation, Horcrux Destruction, Horcrux Hunting, Horcruxes, Kinda, M/M, Moral Dilemmas, Pseudo-Incest, Under the Influence of Horcruxes, Why Did I Write This?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:35:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28640841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blood_Stained_Fingers/pseuds/Blood_Stained_Fingers
Summary: It was not concern in that dark gaze however, but a possessiveness and disturbed look. He turned Harry’s face to the left and right, smoothing his long fingers over Harry’s cold, cold scar.Riddle lowered himself down, so he was chest to chest with Harry, allowing Harry to clasp at his body in a tight hug. Riddle pressed his cheek against Harry’s, the bone sharp enough to cut. His long fingers carded through Harry’s thick, sweat-logged hair, pressing a scorching kiss to his temple as though Harry was fresh as a daisy.“Oh, my little one. We will fix you.”--The cost of making a horcrux was steep and when Voldemort manages to kill Harry, destroying the horcrux within, Harry finds out the exact price of losing a piece of your soul. It made a cruel joke that if Voldemort loved his horcruxes, Harry should love them too.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle, Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | Voldemort, Harry Potter/Voldemort
Comments: 49
Kudos: 697
Collections: Marvelous Dark Harry, why I only sleep an hour a night





	The Cost

**Author's Note:**

> This is a mess, and firmly in the category of 'not good' but there is 7.5k words and I have lost days of my life to it. At this point, you're getting it and you're going to pretend to like it.
> 
> This is a bit depressing and flat, which is totally intentional...

Harry was sure of one thing; Voldemort did not love nor care for anything. Except from his own horcruxes. They were a part of him, and therefore worthy of his affections.

The hatred the man felt for Harry was just as intense if on the opposite side of the spectrum. The nearly blinding pain of insight Harry had with his scar told him as such. Thoughts of Voldemort’s precious Nagini, assuring himself of her safety despite knowing she was able to take care of herself quarrelled with the desire to rend Harry limb from limb.

Scrambling over the debris in Bathilda Bagshot’s spare room, avoiding Nagini’s brutal maw and trying to grab onto Hermione was already three tasks too many, and then Voldemort was there, in the doorway with his eyes blazing. 

“Go!” Harry cried out, shoving and pushing Hermione towards the window. Height be damned.

She evidently had a similar idea, as she sent a blast through the glass to allow them to jump. They grabbed each other, three of Harry’s fingers crushed uncomfortably between their sweaty palms as they leapt.

Then like a hard, frozen snowball made of ice hitting his right shoulder blade; he was engulfed in green.

It’s funny. He didn’t expect the killing curse to actually feel cold. The only warmth was Hermione’s hand clasped in his.

The ground was spiralling towards him.

Then white.

So much white it was blinding.

…And there was Dumbledore, smiling at him sadly, “Oh, Harry. I did not expect to see you here so soon.”

And Harry, who was dimly aware that he was standing in the middle of a ghostly King’s Cross naked as the day he was born, had so many questions. He barely managed to croak, “What?”

Then the horrid truth came out, with all of Dumbledore’s congenial connivance and genuine sorrow.

Harry found it rather ironic that for all Voldemort’s love for his horcruxes, his hatred of Harry had destroyed one.

#

He woke up in a random forest, sprawled on the frosty ground with Hermione’s despairing cries pulling him from the clutches of the afterlife. He wanted to speak out and tell her he was okay. He was _alive_.

Because of course he came back, he would have even without Dumbledore’s urging. There were more horcruxes to find. And of course, Hermione was all alone somewhere. He could not abandon her, not when Ron was also gone.

But what came out when he opened his mouth was a terrible cry.

Something had ripped inside him, torn out and left a gaping wound. Perhaps he had been a horcrux too long for it to be removed now.

The pain was incomprehensible. An agony that could not be described, but for the fact it was in his bones, his marrow. His very core.

Harry could feel his limbs trembling against the forest floor, and there was a coldness in him that was biting. His teeth chattered, blood blooming in his mouth as their violent gnashing caught his tongue.

Harry almost wondered if there were dementors around for the despairing pain and emotion. The feeling of life being sucked out of him.

Hermione’s face was suddenly in his view, pale and blotchy with tears and worry. “Harry? _Harry!_ ” she shrieked, grabbing at him.

He snatched at her wrist, trying to gasp something at her, but all that came out was a high-pitched keening noise. His eyes darted around in panic, her face swimming, the barren branches above appearing like rotten, decrepit fingers.

“What’s wrong? Oh god, Harry, what’s wrong?!” she cried, clasping at his face. He shook his head wordlessly, because what was wrong?

Physically? He didn’t know. He did not think there was a thing wrong with him in body. Not truly. Because, this wasn’t a wound. Not a physical one anyway. Harry knew he could survive this; it was not lethal.

But the agony….

Is this what Voldemort felt every time he made a horcrux? How _could_ he? How could he do this?

Hermione was patting him down, scouring his body for injuries, for blood. She tried a few spells, but neither of them were healers. She tried to lift his body, looking on the cold, frosty ground for any sign of blood, of damage.

“There’s nothing, Harry. Where does it hurt?” she asked, her tears hot little needles as they landed on his face.

He shook his head, squinting his eyes shut. The pain was not retreating, but he was acclimatising to it, “It’s fine. I’m fine,” he gasped out, “I’m not going to die.” Oh Christ, he’s pissed himself, he thought. Didn’t people do that when they died? His jeans were wet. The cold was pooling into his clothes, the smell of ammonia dizzying to his suddenly hypersensitive nose, “Put up the wards! Or move us – we’re not safe.”

Hermione didn’t look convinced at his proclamations of being fine, and he couldn’t blame her. He could hear the noises he was making, like a wounded animal. He could feel his bones rattling, the hole in his soul throbbing around a bleeding wound.

“Knock me out if you have to, but you have to put up the wards!” he cried out, frustrated. He wanted to die. To go back. He couldn’t breathe through this.

It was a relief that she did.

#

Harry woke up later in the tent when day was beginning to break. He groaned, the rising sun piercing through some of the looser stitching of the tent and blinding him. His felt body listless and aching, as though he had played quidditch for hours the day before.

Hermione was instantly upon him, her face concerned and pinched. “Harry--” she said, a wobble to her voice, but attempting to project calm. “—you’ve got a fever.”

It sounded like she was coming from underwater, even the words didn’t seem to sit right. He made a bleary noise of incomprehension.

Something had changed.

The room was sweltering. Hermione’s hand was like ice as she brushed his forehead. She cursed, and Harry blinked at her in dazed amazement. He tried to recall the last time he had ever heard her actually _swear_.

The locket winked at him charmingly from its tucked place in her button-down jumper.

“I’ve been trying to break it,” Hermione explained. “I’m so glad you’re alive.” She then sighed gustily in exhaustion, “But Harry – I checked. I checked when we arrived, and you were just _lying_ there. And I checked and I couldn’t find your pulse,” her voice cracked, her eyes watering, “—I thought you were dead.” She held back a sob valiantly, wiping her own forehead with the back of her forearm. “I’ve got to break this fever,” she repeated; to herself it seemed, trying to not allow any cracks to form.

That information swam in Harry’s mind like soup, the colours of the tent seemed to blur into one each other, even Hermione seemed to be swaying as though entranced by a beat only she could hear, “Not going well, I take it?” Harry asked, drily, but the words felt jumbled. Hermione frowned down at him, trying to hide her worry and holding out a small cup of water. Maybe he hadn’t spoken clearly or said the words in the wrong order.

Harry sat up a little, Hermione cupping the back of his head and supporting him as he took a couple of cautious sips.

The water was so cold he wondered if she had just served him ice. He shuddered at the violence of the temperature.

Goosebumps ran down his arms as the wave of cold ran over him again.

His bones ached.

When he settled back down again on the cot, he felt even more drained than before, his eyes instantly lidding. Hermione piled even more blankets on top of him.

He wanted to thank her, but he fell under again. He was ashamed to say he did not want to wake up.

#

The fever broke the next day, according to Hermione, but Harry still felt wretched. His body shook and shook and shook. He could barely make it from one room to the next. Barely could hold a cup up to his lips. He had a blackened bruise taking over a quarter of his back, splayed along his right shoulder blade.

Quite literally the touch of death upon it.

Harry had no feeling in it at all, and he held his arm stiffly.

He had given Hermione limited details about what he had spoken to Dumbledore about. He wasn’t sure she quite believed him. He didn’t mention the fact he had been a horcrux. Not because he didn’t trust her - far, far from that. He trusted her more than anyone else in the world.

But because he could not process it himself.

Harry couldn’t shut out the sight of that wrinkled, decrepit baby under the bench. He might have been inclined to not believe any of that conversation had happened at all but for the fact that he felt as though someone had taken a shredder to his insides.

The pain slowly faded over the next couple of days. But so did everything else.

Alone at night, he wanted to sob, his shoulders heaved under the onslaught, but no tears came. He had long learned the lesson that tears would not help him as the Dursley’s hated the sight of them, the teachers believed it was a falsehood, a deception. So, when he had cried as a child, it had been silent and private.

And now there was nothing.

There was pain and there was sorrow, but he could not bring his body to express it.

It was so wrong. Unnatural.

The worst feeling was the cold. Not only physically, which had numbed, but mentally, emotionally. Everything was disjointed. Disconnected.

Harry even watched Hermione with a great deal of detachment. He didn’t want her to die. But if she did, well that would be that, wouldn’t it?

He was sorry that Ron had left. But if he never returned, if they never spoke again? Well, that would be that, wouldn’t it?

Loss did not feel like _loss_ anymore.

Hermione continued to cry and mope continually. Where once he would have felt desperately sorry for her, wanted to comfort her despite not being the most emotionally equipped person in the world. Now? He wanted to yell at her, “When have tears solved anything?” but then immediately could see the lack of charity in that thought. She could not help herself, and she had rights to her emotions.

But Harry felt nothing, just the cold analytical thoughts of a machine. A sharper and more cutting machine than he had been before the removal of his emotions.

You couldn’t unlearn morals or ethics, but once the emotional impetus was gone, how did they remain?

He wanted to hate Dumbledore, wanted to howl with the betrayal, but it was a distant hurt. For how could Harry say his life was worth more than the entire wizarding world? The greater good? In fact, what did the greater good matter at all?

The world would continue to keep turning if he did not defeat Voldemort. It would be worse for wear in the British magical community, but it would carry on.

Or it would die out.

But what did it really matter? What will be, will be.

The muggle community was only getting larger anyway, their technology was improving. Surely there was already a clock on the secrecy of magical existence?

Before, he might have felt a terrible guilt, or personal responsibility to end Voldemort by giving up his own life. Something Dumbledore would have banked on.

But now? Apathy.

How did Voldemort _live_ like this? How could he want to?

Harry could not recall the last time he had felt happy, could not recall what it felt like to chase after the snitch, flying and soaring above all the crowds during quidditch. Could not remember how he felt when he hugged Sirius, nor the feel of warm hands across his back when he was hugged in return.

Sirius had been fond of him, he was sure, but he could not remember how to know that. How he had felt that in turn.

Terrifyingly, Harry knew he could not produce a Patronus anymore.

He could see Dolores Umbridge kicked out of Hogwarts a hundred times over, could see Sirius stumble out the other side of the veil unharmed and laughing uproariously at his deranged cousin and not summon the happiness to conjure his Patronus.

It was as if the entire concept had been lost to him. Colour had been removed from the world; his energy lacklustre.

Voldemort had been a terrible, empty child, but surely even he had felt this hopeless despair, this endless agony when he tore his actual soul apart?

Harry still had all of his soul, but now there was a cavity. Space once occupied by another being, if only a sliver of them.

Would it heal with time? Close over that space that had been occupied for years?

Would this listless agony end?

Or…

Or would Harry have to end it?

Hermione hummed at something in one of her many books, and Harry saw the glint of gold again.

She had been wearing the locket for _days_ at this point. She had massive bags under her eyes, purpling and blue, and had taken on a pale and ghastly hue. One that Harry was sure he was echoing. He shuffled down in his cocoon of blankets. “Give me the locket, you’ve had it on too long,” he finally rasped, voice wrecked from his crying and moaning during the fever, then his stoicism from the following days.

“No. That’ll just make _you_ worse,” she snapped in return, barely glancing up from her tome.

Even that barely inspired a reaction from him, “Just for a little while, then. You need a break.”

Hermione wavered indecisively for a long moment, looking terribly torn and pulling gently at the corner of the book. “It’s all right, ‘mione,” He whispered reassuringly as he could whilst sounding like he had been recently strangled, “I’ll be fine.”

That seemed to do the trick. Or maybe it was desperation. Hermione got up, reaching around her neck to unlatch the cursed thing, desperate to be rid of it. She set the locket down next to him on the table with a relieved sigh. The pinched look on her face had already smoothed out by the time she sat back.

“I’ll just be in the next room,” she offered with a hesitant and grateful smile. Harry nodded sleepily.

“Why not have a nap? You look exhausted,” he offered.

“I can’t. Someone needs to be on watch.”

“I can do it for a couple hours. You can’t look after me, do all this research, cook and be on watch. You need to sleep too.” From the stubborn set of her jaw, Harry could see she was about to protest. He smiled. “I’ll wake you. I _promise._ ” He reached out with his cold hand, clasping her equally cold and yet clammy hand. “We’re in this together. We have to have each other’s backs.”

That seemed to soften her; she looked so tired that she could keel over on the spot. “Only two hours?”

“Promise.”

She nodded, and slowly stood, tiredness making her seem old and bedraggled. She left her books open on the table, not even giving them a cursory glance nor tidy as she was wont to do.

The curtain to her room closed silently.

Harry glanced down at the locket on the table. It trembled under his gaze. Not from fear nor caution, but from excitement. It had had its fill off all three of them over the past months, had driven them all to the brink, one of them away.

Harry felt sick at the thought of wearing it again. He had no desire to be near the thing, to feel even worse than he already did.

Could a horcrux move by itself if he just left it on the table?

He sighed gustily. There was nothing for it. Too much had been fought and lost for this horcrux. He couldn’t take any unnecessary risks.

Maybe he could just hold it? Just clench it in his fist in case he dropped off.

He wormed his hand out from his blankets, fingers hesitating over it before he committed to picking it up, but when Harry touched the locket, he tried to stifle his gasp. _Warmth._

It was so warm. And not just a warmth than was in his palm; it ran up his arm, spread throughout his body like a raze of heat.

It was like coming home.

Like colour in the word. The brightness of the summer sky.

The locket, which had always been so repugnant to him before, oily and dark, now felt like life itself. He had feeling in his fingertips, warmth in his chest. He wanted to laugh with the joy of it.

And the locket? The locket radiated a sense of amusement.

Knowledge.

Then sadness, righteous fury.

_Who broke you, brother?_

Harry dropped the locket in shock, but the chain had tangled itself in his fingers belligerently.

It had never _spoken_ before. Harry tried to shake it off, despite wanting to clutch it closer, but the chain grew tighter and more complexly linked as he did.

 _No, no brother._ It cried, sadly. _Let me help you._

Harry stood up, wobbling as the heavy blankets slid off him with muffled thumps to the floor. He glanced at Hermione’s closed curtain, but nothing stirred.

He glanced at the opening of the tent. He should stay in sight of it, to at least do a half-arse job of keeping watch. He should linger here, but oddly, he wanted to deal with this in private.

He just needed a couple of minutes to detangle the damned thing. Then he would be fine.

Harry stumbled on his heavy, leaden legs into his own room, his sick bed still covered in sweat-soaked sheets, the taint of illness heavy in the poor ventilation of the room.

The coils of gold had now got around his wrist, the body of the locket trying again to get into the seat of his palm.

It reached his skin before he could figure out how to detach it without touching it.

The warm sensation flooded him again. He soundlessly gasped. Tried not to fall to his knees.

 _Let me help you brother, how did this happen to you?_ The locket continued, beseechingly. _How did_ I _let this happen to you? Am I still in the world? I’ll destroy them for you._

Harry collapsed onto the side of his hard bunk. His eyes burnt with the flooding of feeling. He could cry with the relief, despite the horrid words.

It was the same kind of cloying concern that Voldemort felt for Nagini. That possessive desire to ensure she was safe at all times.

His muscles had stopped aching. His very soul seemed to sing at the contact. That gaping void from within seemed less empty, less of a vacuum for all that was good in the world.

How could he tell this horcrux that the ‘main’ soul had done this to him? Unintentionally. How could Harry say he was meant to kill Voldemort? That he was hunting the pieces down to destroy them?

Harry’s fist closed around the locket subconsciously.

He never wanted to let it go, regardless of the consequences.

He felt _alive_ again.

He had never felt this alive before. But he had never appreciated warmth until it was gone. He had never noticed how much he needed it, until its absence.

He lay back curling around his fist, brought it up to the centre of his chest, trying to process, trying to breathe.

 _Brother! Brother! Let me help you._ It was such a soothing voice.

But how? How could it help? Then a terrible thought occurred to him. And in his euphoria, he followed through with it.

“Open,” Harry croaked. “Open,” he strained.

He couldn’t speak Parseltongue.

_Concentrate, brother._

But that was right, Harry had never had the instinctive flow of Parseltongue Voldemort seemed to have. He could pick it up and respond to it quick enough, but he had to concentrate to use it.

So, he thought of the heavy ornate decoration pressed against his skin. The gemstones in the shape of an S for Slytherin, S like the curved body of a snake.

“ _Open.”_

And the latch clicked on the locket.

A sound like someone was taking in a breath.

And suddenly Tom Riddle was there, on top of him, straddling his chest and clutching at his face with burning hot hands.

Harry should have been terrified, should have regretted opening the locket in the first place. Such a foolish action.

But he couldn’t because the warmth given out by Riddle being out of the locket was ten-fold what it had been before.

He arched recklessly into that touch, to the dark eyes that were skewering him.

It was not concern in that dark gaze however, but a possessiveness and disturbed look. He turned Harry’s face to the left and right, smoothing his long fingers over Harry’s cold, cold scar.

Harry gasped out wordlessly to the sensation, heedless to whether Hermione might hear him or not.

“ _Oh, my poor, little brother. Who did this to you?”_ It was a silken croon, and the horcrux pressed his forehead to Harry’s.

It felt like being complete. He was home.

He pressed his face into Riddle’s hands, taking large gulps of air, like he hadn’t taken a breath in years. Riddle let Harry clutch at him in hedonic amusement.

But there was genuine anger there too. Harry didn’t know how the locket had known straight away what was wrong with him, or why, if he was no longer a horcrux that he should have such a reaction, but how could he care?

Riddle lowered himself down, so he was chest to chest with Harry, allowing Harry to clasp at his body in a tight hug. Riddle pressed his cheek against Harry’s, the bone sharp enough to cut. His long fingers carded through Harry’s thick, sweat-logged hair, pressing a scorching kiss to his temple as though Harry was fresh as a daisy.

“ _Oh, my little one. We will fix you.”_

#

Harry had let Hermione sleep for as long as she needed. The contact with the locket surprisingly had let Harry sap some kind of energy from it, making him feel better.

Harry knew that he should not get emotionally close to it, that it could only lead down a road similar to Ginny’s. But the hollowness dissipated at the first contact with the locket. He would wear it for hours and be like his old self when he did.

Hermione tried to be fair and take her turn wearing it, but they both became worn and sullen when she did, and so the balance shifted to 60/40, then 30/70 and then…

Harry didn’t want to tell Riddle anything, but he did. He told him _everything_. Haltingly, stalling, each secret pulled out gently as though teasing out a loose thread.

Harry ought to feel ashamed, but that along with everything else had been stripped from him. The only thing that meant something, felt like something, was the accursed locket.

And its constant affections, _brother_ this, _brother_ that. Gentle touches, caresses, gestures that Harry did not think Riddle was even capable of.

Harry could feel its presence at all times, knew it sapped a bit of energy here and there from both Harry and Hermione to fund the trips out of the locket itself.

But how could Harry complain when he could sleep at night? When there were a pair of arms to hold him up when the emptiness made him want to buckle. Made him want to burn the tent to the ground at the thought he may never experience it again.

Harry was glad that Ron was gone, so he had the space to himself, where Riddle would not be seen.

When the doe Patronus turned up one night, the locket had sat heavily on his chest as he followed. Neither of them had been expecting the Sword of Gryffindor at the end of the trail. Where before there might have been relief tempered with suspicion, now there was only the cold, level-headed questions - who had set it there? Was it a trap? Who on earth knew about this mission and was actively helping them?

None-the-less, Harry had to retrieve it. He dove into the small pool of water, the iciness nearly choking him.

 _Brother, what are you doing?_ The locket asked cautiously.

I need to collect it. It’s a priceless artefact.

_You’re not going to destroy me? The others?_

Harry thought about it as he pulled himself down and down, closer to the glittering rubies of the sword.

He could not bear to snuff the horcruxes out. Not now. The cold disappeared when they were near him, the only way he could defeat Voldemort was to destroy them all, and then to follow shortly after.

And one thing that had happened to Harry after having something so vital as his own soul ripped? He knew selfishness.

Harry did not want to die. No matter how warm, how complete the horcruxes made him feel – how much like his old self – it was only towards them. Not to anyone else.

It made a cruel joke that if Voldemort loved his horcruxes, Harry should love them too.

 _No. Never._ He promised it.

He had lost something human in that accident. Maybe he may have held onto it if it had been a sacrifice. Maybe if his death had been one of the last horcruxes, and he had been told _when_ he was supposed to be told - then he may have been able to return whole.

Afterall, willingly and consciously letting go of something must be different than having it violently ripped out of your back as you throw yourself out of a window?

His hand finally reached the pommel of the sword, and he quickly pushed himself off a rock, prize clutched to his chest, locket pulsing warmly at his throat.

The air was as glacial as the water and Harry wanted to curl up almost instantly as he broke the surface. He threw the sword onto the forest floor, preparing to pull himself out after it, when a pair of hands grabbed him under his arms, heaving him out.

Harry reacted in shock, pulling away and rolling to his feet, ignoring the sting of twigs and debris cutting into his exposed flesh, fists clenched and ready to swing until he saw the red hair, blue eyes. Freckles stark against the pale skin.

“Ron?” he blurted in shock, his coiled fists trembling in the cold.

“It’s me!” Ron held up his hands placatingly, his two gloves sopping wet. “Harry! Please it’s me!”

“Is it?” Harry hissed, scathingly, “What was the first spell you showed me?” he demanded.

“Uh-uh--” Ron’s eyes darted around as he scrambled for thought, before lighting in remembrance, “It was that fake spell to change the colour of Scabbers! On the train to Hogwarts!”

Harry’s heart started to settle again in his chest, nodding his head in concession. Though a rapid tidal wave of rage began to build in its place. So similar to how he felt after Voldemort’s resurrection.

Harry called his wand, and it slapped into his hand; so _willing_ , so _eager_ to be put to use. “You think you can just come back?” he demanded of Ron, towering over his fallen form. “You think you can storm out – abandon us – and just _waltz_ back in whenever you like?” He sneered, “Thought you’d play the hero? Putting the sword at the bottom of the pond during winter?!”

“Harry!” Ron cried out, staggering back at the pointed wand, the tip sparking with something vicious feeling. “I didn’t!”

Harry took a threatening step forward. Riddle suddenly wrapped his warm arms around Harry’s shuddering form, pulling him back and instantly the madness retreated, the steadiness flowed in. Like a soothing balm, like sanity.

The locket nosed at Harry’s hairline, “ _Calm, little brother. Calm.”_ His hand cupped Harry’s throat gently, “ _Shh. Shh.”_

Ron had turned a shade of white that Harry had never seen on the pale boy before, his mouth opening and closing at the sight of Riddle wrapped around Harry like some kind of limpet.

Harry could feel the press of Riddle’s teeth as he grinned into Harry’s skin, “ _Let this useless boy go. He may be stupid, but his intent is not harmful. Modify his memory, brother. Your will is as strong as mine, even if your hand is a little more…indelicate. I will guide you,_ ” Riddle whispered into his ear, “ _Let this boy see my destruction. Then we need never be parted again._ ”

Harry still had the fake locket. A distinct memory of Malfoy on the night Dumbledore died, catching sight of it clasped in his hand stirred to the surface. Harry had hurriedly stuffed it in his pocket. At the time, he had belatedly worried if he had drawn more attention to himself by trying to hide it.

Even in the heat of the battle, Malfoy and Harry had paused at the sight of each other. Malfoy looked hard about the mouth and jaw, but his eyes were scared. He hadn’t been ready for war. Even Harry, who seemed to face these kinds of situations every year, had been scared. None of them were ready for it.

Hogwarts was a home to all of them, and it had been breached by death eaters.

But even in his memory now, the memory didn’t make sense. Those emotions - so easily identifiable to Harry back then – saturated with hate and despair, Malfoy’s plight had still evoked _pity_ in him, were long gone.

He had the fake locket, the sword of Gryffindor and Riddle’s hand guiding his wand. It was all so distressingly easy when one did not have guilt.

#

After collecting the cup and sat in a field with their hastily pitched tent, Harry sent Hermione and Ron to bed claiming he would take first watch. The dragon lazily drank water, settling in the shallow waters and splashing at the cold water with its muzzle.

There was only the mystery horcrux (Ravenclaw’s diadem, Riddle thought) and Nagini left. They were so close.

Exhaustion had run them all down, and very quickly Ron and Hermione were asleep, leaving Harry and Riddle all alone.

Harry pulled out the cup and set it in front of him. Riddle appeared seconds later, peering over his shoulder. There was a smile in his voice, “ _I think you should use this one_.”

“ _Use?_ ”

Riddle’s long-fingered hand carded through Harry’s hair. “ _Yes. To replace what was lost_.”

Harry stilled cautiously, not daring to hope. Not daring to want it.

Riddle pressed a kiss onto his shoulder, “ _I promised we would fix you, did I not?_ ”

“ _Will it work?_ ” Harry asked, leaning back into the warmth for a torturous second. “ _Is it even possible?”_

“ _A horcrux cannot just move to any object; but to another horcrux or a welcoming host? Of course, it will work.”_ Riddle squeezed his arms comfortingly for a second, before letting go and picking up the cup with curious fingers. He smiled beguilingly at it.

The juddering of the cup stopped for a moment, before continuing in a more excited manner, “ _You see how happy we all make each other, brother?”_ Riddle asked, “ _We just want to be together, I want you to feel better. Even the shade that walks around now would want that for you, if he knew what you were.”_

Harry shook his head disbelievingly, “No. He wouldn’t.”

“ _Yes, he would. He might punish you for trying to destroy your family, and all of our safety on some misguided mission from Dumbledore, but you know better now, do you not?”_ Riddle, cup in hand, stroked Harry’s face and the sensation of them together made Harry’s eyes roll to the back of his head. “ _I think he would even forgive you the diary. Though the guilt you must feel now…it was unbearable in the locket, but in a book? At sixteen, no less. I am so often the victim of my own ambitions.”_

The locket looked quite a bit older than the diary, and though in some measures he looked even more distinguished and handsome than before, there was also signs of wear. Dark, dark magic that had started to strip away the human veneer he had tried so hard to maintain over the years.

But he was everything to Harry in that moment. Water to a dying man.

“What do I need to do?” he asked.

“ _Good boy. My good brother,”_ Riddle murmured, “ _I only want us all to be happy.”_ He stepped away and placed the cup on the table. He slid it over to Harry, “ _It barely has any sentience, though it will…contribute a little more than the old piece did. It’s not too much larger than what you had._ ” He frowned, turning the cup around on the table with a keen eye. “ _The diadem may have less soul in it, but we cannot be sure. And I feel the inevitable conclusion to this war will be closing in sooner rather than later._ ”

“ _You know what I’ll be doing if I take this on. What I’ll be conceding?_ ” Harry asked, once again cold and dead.

“ _The war. Perhaps not to that mad creature that is parading around at the moment, and possibly not for a while yet, but ultimately to Voldemort_.”

“ _I don’t think I can do that_.”

Riddle nodded deeply, contemplative, “ _But can you live like this, Harry?_ ”

And Harry had to sit back. And think. Could he?

He had somewhat adjusted to the emptiness, the cold bereft feeling of something missing when it should be complete. And surely like all wounds, time would help? Surely in a few years it would have reduced to something bearable?

But what if it didn’t? What if he never looked at anyone and felt any facsimile of emotion again?

What if he became what he despised so much? What if he played with people’s lives like pieces on a chessboard?

What if he became unstable?

What if he drowned in the nothingness he felt when he was not in contact with a horcrux? Would he be doomed to spend the rest of his life in bed, alone, no energy, nor want to do anything again?

Or would he end up fighting and duelling…killing people? His temper was bad at the best of times - an ingredient his now empty and more analytical mind could attribute to his upbringing - but what if he hurt people?

He had wanted to curse Ron for coming _back_ to them. They needed Ron. He was their friend, and all he had wanted to do was strike him down for his human weaknesses.

He remembered Hermione’s flinches when he snapped too much. His temper lashing at even the people he cared about. What about those who he didn’t?

Harry would be better off dead. Better that than to become like Voldemort. Like Snape and his petty cruelty to hurt others for what? Breathing? Existing?

Maybe that is what he should do.

“ _It is odd, that my soul would bring you so much comfort,_ ” Riddle said gently, coming to sit next to Harry, pressed thigh to thigh. Harry uncoiled, some of that agitation washing away.

“Do you…do you think I’ve lost some of my own soul by dying?” Harry asked. Dumbledore didn’t seem to think so, and the killing curse certainly got its requirement when Harry had left the other piece of soul behind. But he wondered what Riddle thought. _Cared_ what he thought.

Riddle hummed contemplatively, “ _I do not know. I do not believe so, but after all that time with both mine and yours in there, how could your soul tell the difference?_ ” Riddle stroked his arm, squeezing his wrist, “ _Oh, little one, you’d be my youngest if it were not for the snake.”_ He interlocked their fingers, _“How cruel of Dumbledore to expect this sacrifice of you.”_

Harry could not hold it in anymore, trying to unlink their fingers, “ _Why are_ you _so determined to help me?_ ”

“ _You are me and I am you. And you’re in pain. The cup… well, I also know the sufferings of being trapped without stimulus for years. Why not marry you and the cup together?_ ” Riddle said, with barely any inflection in his voice. “ _I have not lost a horcrux by doing so, and I make two more comfortable by allowing it_.” He grabbed Harry’s head, pulling it onto his shoulder so he could continue to gently tug at the wild strands. “ _You think me unfeeling and cruel. I am. But not to myself. I rather like myself and by proxy, I like you too. I would not see you suffer any more than I would myself._ ”

Harry felt a trembling deep within, a fluttering of regret and guilt at his selfishness, and for the fact he didn’t genuinely feel guilty at all, “How do I do this?”

“ _Simple, Harry--_ ” A cold finger wiped under Harry’s eye, collecting a tear Harry hadn’t realised he was shedding. _“—regret_.” He continued to whisper in English, and Harry had forgotten how beautiful and lulling…how manipulative his voice could be, “I do not regret making any of my horcruxes. I do not regret being one. But _you_ regret it so much that you’ll let the world burn. Even if allowing me my tethers is the only way to save yourself.”

“You said you didn’t think I had lost any of my soul.”

“No, but I stand by my initial thoughts. After so much time, so many years growing together, how would you know the difference between your soul and mine? That tear must have been as deep as when I made my first horcrux, a parting of souls that had always functioned as one. Though, I had much less to lose emotionally.”

Harry had lost his humanity by making a faux horcrux, Riddle had lost his ability to pretend to be human by making his.

Riddle tilted Harry’s face up to his own, reminiscent of the first time they had contact. Harry shut his eyes to the heat, the intensity of that stare.

“I do wonder, Harry, if anyone has ever told you that you are allowed to want things for yourself. You’re allowed to content yourself first before anyone else, and you do not owe the world anything. Especially if it is unwilling to help itself. _I have seen a ministry in your memories that is adjusting to the new world order, reorganising and abiding by something that is not sustainable. They may want to be saved, but why should you suffer and die for them if they will not do so themselves?_ ”

“ _They’re too scared to fight back._ ”

“ _Some, most definitely. Others, do not care enough_.”

Harry hesitated. Audaciously, tellingly, “…I don’t think we’re going to agree on this.”

Riddle’s smile turned coy, “ _No, I do not imagine we will. But what we do agree on is that you cannot continue feeling like this. Allow yourself some comfort._ ” He pressed the cup into Harry’s hand. “Let me help you.”

The cup upon hearing those words tried to possess him. Like a viper that had been waiting for Riddle’s command, it struck fast in that moment of distraction.

It was not as bad as when Voldemort had attempted it in the ministry atrium nearly two years ago, but it was uniquely awful for the fact it was not painful like last time. It was pleasant and almost like the imperious curse – floaty and distant, but Harry could not let it happen.

This was his body.

He gasped when the pressure finally released and the entity retreated, shrieking unhappily back to the cup. It rattled jarringly before skidding across the floor angrily and hiding.

Harry slumped, sliding off the uncomfortable sofa and onto the floor, sweating profusely.

Riddle started to laugh, “ _You’re too strong for it, brother. That is good._ ”

Harry lay there, dazed, “What was that? How do I do this if it wants to take over?”

“ _It must accept it’s place is not to control you, but to live with you. It shall take some time and effort at first. Do not push it out, coax it._ ”

Harry groaned into the carpet, head spinning. The effort of resisting made him feel faint. The expenditure of energy surprisingly high. But then again, they had just broken into Gringotts a few hours ago with the locket sapping at him too, against barely any food or sleep.

Harry jerked awake to the cup pressed against his leg, positively buzzing with energy and contentedness. It reminded Harry of the large bumblebees in Aunt Petunia’s garden that would settle on the flowers lazily, their bodies almost too heavy for their wings to support. And they would buzz so loudly as they sat on the brightly coloured petals.

He stroked the rim of the cup contemplatively. It buzzed louder at the contact.

“I had a word with it. The smaller the piece, the less sentient it is.” Riddle’s voice seemed distorted, and Harry blinked up to see him on the couch above him, smiling down. “None of the others can be speak. The cup can barely express itself, but it understands now.” His fingers brushed the cup too, then up to Harry’s fingers, “Why, the piece that was in you probably did not have a voice, nor thoughts. It was purely what a horcrux ought to be. A tether. You should have told me you were feeling so delicate.”

“Do you think I am not strong enough for this piece?” His old sense of belligerence made a flagging effort to rise, but soon deflated; he just sighed.

“Far from it. You have survived worse, but we have been busy today.”

It was tiring, all of it was. So, instead he let himself think. Let himself regret. Remembered the remorse, the pain, the wailing agony as he lay on that cold, frozen forest floor so broken.

The emptiness, the loss. Sirius. The memory of his stag Patronus charging down the dementors. Something he would never see again. Even with the horcrux back, he feared the ability would never return.

He could feel the horcrux moving this time, slow and cautious. Warned off by its bigger brother. The transfer of energy was slower this time, more like a trickle. Less of a battle of wills.

It slot into place almost silently, the gaping nothingness within finally closing.

Harry let out a soft sigh. It was different. Not like before, but better. Not the all-consuming nature of the locket, but not the natural set of the previous horcrux.

He tried to assess himself.

But then his scar burned. Burned like it used to, and _how did he ever cope with this pain before?_

Voldemort knew. He was looking at him. Through him.

Looking at the empty cup sat beside him.

There was a low-grade horror, with a depth of emotion Voldemort only felt for himself as he realised that something had happened to his horcruxes.

A long-forgotten connection between those soul pieces and himself.

It was dizzying to get flashes of the others, to feel the empty connections, frayed tethers where the diary should be, see what looked like stacks of old ruined furniture piled high in a dusty, disused room that was familiar to Harry, looking up at Voldemort himself through a serpent’s poor vision…

To see himself lying on the floor, inarticulate groaning as his scar bled, from the locket’s own vantage point.

“Do you feel better, Harry?” Riddle asked, and Harry could hear the voice both echoing around his own skull and externally as the locket prodded him with curious fingers.

 _No, no, shut up. Don’t let him hear!_ He tried to say, the thought bouncing between three skulls.

Voldemort’s anger skewered his brain, with laser focus.

Harry watched his own body turn, could distantly feel the rough carpet shift under his hair and his torso pull against his shirt as he took in great gulps of air. He watched himself blink with big, red eyes.

“Harry,” Riddle sung, “Do you feel better now the horcrux is restored?” he asked again. All three of them could feel the stretch of Riddle’s face as he smiled.

_Shut up! Shut up! Shut. UP!_

The red faded, and green filtered through. And suddenly Harry was back in his body. He was staring at Riddle, partially dribbling onto himself. He didn’t feel so cold anymore. Could feel a whole range of emotions he had before, but distantly. He would never be able to be ruled by them again.

There was the feeling of something within moving, squirming into nooks and crannies contentedly.

“Fuck,” Harry croaked, “He knows.”

“Of course, he does,” Riddle conceded drolly, “It’s time we went home, Harry.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is always appreciated.


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